Charles Smiley has posted about upgrading Tyco flat cars following Bruce Petty's ideas. (Steve Priest had an article in MR in the 1990s doing something very similar with Tyco flats.) The Tyco plastic reefers are also very good candidates for upgrade. I've filled out a PFE reefer block with rebuilt PFE wood cars that I upgraded with Tichy PFE underframes. I've also done some as MDT cars leaving the stock underframe:
I've also upgraded some with .040 styrene underframe, Athearn sills, and aftermarket brake parts:
Bruce Petty talks on his site about upgrading the Tyco hopper cars into SP ballast cars http://lariverrailroads.com/gravel_pit.html Robert Mosteller at Great Decals has similar ideas with Virginian cars and sells decal sets to convert them to VGN and merged N&W cars. I've done a bunch of these:
I've always wondered why nobody's taken over the Tyco tooling and issued upgraded versions of these cars, since they'd still be roughly equivalent to Athearn bluebox or Accurail quality. It turns out that Bachmann has in fact done this. The newer Bachmann HO flat car is the Tyco tooling with better trucks and body mount couplers. They've also announced reefers that look like they're also Tyco tooling, look like interesting paint schemes, but seem expensive.
I've also upgraded some with .040 styrene underframe, Athearn sills, and aftermarket brake parts:
Bruce Petty talks on his site about upgrading the Tyco hopper cars into SP ballast cars http://lariverrailroads.com/gravel_pit.html Robert Mosteller at Great Decals has similar ideas with Virginian cars and sells decal sets to convert them to VGN and merged N&W cars. I've done a bunch of these:
I've always wondered why nobody's taken over the Tyco tooling and issued upgraded versions of these cars, since they'd still be roughly equivalent to Athearn bluebox or Accurail quality. It turns out that Bachmann has in fact done this. The newer Bachmann HO flat car is the Tyco tooling with better trucks and body mount couplers. They've also announced reefers that look like they're also Tyco tooling, look like interesting paint schemes, but seem expensive.